SearchFit Shopping Cart v6.2 (Apr 24, 2006)

[stanley@searchfit]

SearchFit Shopping Cart v6.2 (Apr 24, 2006)
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changes and new features
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1. NEW: added REPORTS/Searches menu item where captured search information is recorded. It allows the store owner to have an idea of what the visitors are searching for while they are on his/her website. This feature works only if the dynamic search function that allows visitors to search through the store is available on the owner's website. For more information about the dynamic search refer to the main template help and read the AUTO_GENERATED_TOOL_SEARCHDB section.

2. NEW: new keywords can be used in the main templates and custom pages:
a) AUTO_GENERATED_PRODUCTS_GROUP_id: will be replaced with group of products. Replace the id with id of Group you want to generate the products of. Example: AUTO_GENERATED_PRODUCTS_GROUP_3. The keyword helps also customers that have customized pages where they manually show products. Now, they can just define a group of products, assign a product template to the group, and include the keyword in the customized pages or main templates, where they would like to show the products on. Changing the groups of products will change during the regeneration automatically the pages the products appear on. Enjoy less work lol...

3. NEW: added additional payment method called "NothingToPay". The method will be the only choice on the first checkout page if the grand total of the order is zero. This may happen if the buyer uses a gift certificate, coupon, discount, or anything that makes the order to have no grand total (zero amount). By default, no billing information will be collected if this method has been selected.

4. NEW: thumbnails can be added to products in addition to small and big images. The thumbnails can be imported, exported, and used in templates.

5. NEW: added "sql_where" attribute for an advanced way of exporting orders. The usage of the attribute requires a knowledge about the order_customer database table. The following example will export only orders that have PayPal payment method:
<export_foreach_record sql_where="payment_method=1">
order number = ORDER_NUMBER, payment method = ORDER_PAYMENT_METHOD
</export_foreach_record>

6. NEW: the templates of type "Export Orders" can be used in the ThanksPage. In the example bellow the content between the <template_order> and </template_order> tags will be treated as a template of type "Export Orders". Refer to the help of templates of type "Export Orders" for more information. Example:
<template_order>
<export_foreach_record>
order number = ORDER_NUMBER, order date = ORDER_DATE; ORDER_TIME<br>
<foreach_item>
ORDER_ITEM_NAME (ORDER_ITEM_QTY x ORDER_ITEM_PRICE = ORDER_ITEM_PRICE_TOTAL)<br>
</foreach_item>
</export_foreach_record>
</template_order>

7. NEW: the new "Dest Cart URL (HTTP)" property of the users may contain the non HTTPS URL of the cart. This URL is used to show non-secure information as popups of products and similar.

8. NEW: this feature requires "iconv character set conversion facility" installed on the servers. If textareas include special symbols like
€ ‘ ’ “ ” • – — ™ ¢ £ ¤ ¥ © ­ ® ° ± · º ½ ¼ ¾
then the symbols will be repaced with the following html equivalents
&euro; &lsquo; &rsquo; &ldquo; &rdquo; • &ndash; &mdash; &trade; &cent; &pound; &curren; &yen; &copy; &shy; &reg; &deg; &plusmn; &middot; &ordm; &frac12; &frac14; &frac34; &divide;

9. NEW: added new configuration property on the import products form:
a) "Product Update Mode" with two choices. The [Standard] choice creates links to existing products if different categories specified. The [No Links] choice enables reorganization of products by moving them to specified different categories.

10. CHANGE: the header of the CategoryType menu may not have the text centered anymore, to make the text centered just change the following CSS item:
.menu_header_td_inner { font-weight: bold; text-align: center; }

11. FIXED: the export products function had a problem when the applied template was starting with PRODUCT_PROPERTY_XX keyword

12. FIXED: updating the content of the customized pages that contained apostrophecharacters had problems on some servers

13. FIXED: a problem while showing the images of the options on the preview product windows

14. FIXED: the category image was appearing by mistake in the footer content on the generated category pages

15. FIXED: the shopping cart information shown on the generated pages was not updating dynamically from "add to cart" actions if the main website URL had the fully qualified domain name like www.mydomainhere.com and visitors were browsing the short one like mydomainhere.com
_________________
Stanimir Stanev (Stanley)
SearchFit Architect and Lead Developer
www.searchfit.com
www.stanev.com

[pampered]

Stan,

Thank you for these updates.

John
_________________
John

[pampered]

Stan,

Please explain how the thumbnails differ from the small image.

Is there now a third page where thumbnails are viewed, in addition to the category pages (which use the small image) and the detailed product page (which uses the large image).

Thank you for clarifying the thumbnail image use.

John
_________________
John

[pampered]

Stan,

Will the Export Report of Searches Made work if I am using the code:

<form style="margin:0px" action="tool_search.php" method="post">
<input type="hidden" name="action" value="search">
<input type="text" class="text" name="search_query" value="" size="15">
<input type="submit" class="btn" name="submitit" value="Search">
</form>

Or, do I need to use something different?

John
_________________
John

[stanley@searchfit]

no, we don't generate 3rd product page for the thumbnails, they are just additional images that all of you can show anywhere on the brief or detailed pages, there are some customers that will use those in a special way

instead of the search form you sent, use the one bellow

<form style="margin:0px" action="tool_dynamic.php" method="post">
<input type="hidden" name="action" value="search">
<input type="hidden" name="searchby1" value="keywords">
<input type="text" class="text" name="searchby_keywords" value="" size="15">
<input type="submit" class="btn" name="submitit" value="Search">
</form>

notice that the action is action="tool_dynamic.php" and this is important, the one that you sent is deprecated...

good luck,
Stan
_________________
Stanimir Stanev (Stanley)
SearchFit Architect and Lead Developer
www.searchfit.com
www.stanev.com

[trackhaus2]

Stan,

Very nice implementation the keyword search tool. I hadn't thought of doing it this way but it is better than the way I thought of. The "results" field is something I hadn't even thought of but now that I see it, it is proving to be very handy. I'm already thinking of changing some product descriptions based upon what people searched for.

A couple of suggestions.

1. It would be handy to be able to sort by A. Date & time, B. Term, C. Results

I also think being able to export the results to a CSV for importing into Excel will be a truly helfpul analysis function.

As the tool sits now if there are hundreds (or thousands for some of your sites) of searches over time it will be difficult to count them. Perhaps a count function that works with the filter would be ideal. So, if you don't filter the results you get a total count. If you then filter, say on a specific keyword or result, you can get a count.

Thanks. This is a really handy tool that noone else has (that I know of anyway).

For those of you who don't know why this tool was implemented:

See what people are actually looking for on your site then:
A. Adjust your product line - add products you're missing, or reposition products on your pages so they are more or less prominent.
B. Revise your product titles and descriptions around what people are looking for rather than what you think they are looking for.
C. Revise your SEO campaign to include keywords you haven't thought of but your customers have. Wordtracker can do a lot of this but here you have an actual customer telling you what they want.

With the results field you can determine if you're getting a lot of searches for "X" and the results are zero, then you're keywords need tweaking or you need more product.

Sweet!

-Greg

[stanley@searchfit]

I will make notes about your suggestions

two things are good to know:

1. you can search throught the captured information and the search form provides you with a way to count similar searches. For example this will give as a result all searches that include the words searchfit and optimization:

%searchfit%optimization%

read the help (hte "?" icon) and you will have a better idea of what you can do

2. if you do mouse over the id of the captured search record then you will see how the visitor has found your website, you can click on it to go there as well

enjoy,
Stan
_________________
Stanimir Stanev (Stanley)
SearchFit Architect and Lead Developer
www.searchfit.com
www.stanev.com

[trackhaus2]

Good things to know. Thank you!

-Greg

P.S. To all SFers who read this keep in mind the following: if you use your site's search box you can skew your results!